NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #31/NN_1992_31.iso/spool/soc/rights/human/4619

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From: Multinational Monitor via Jym Dyer <[e-mail]>
Newsgroups: soc.rights.human,alt.activism,talk.environment
Subject: INFO: British Petroleum (BP) -- A Legacy of Apartheid and Pollution
Followup-To: soc.rights.human,alt.activism.d,talk.environment
Date: 22 Dec 1992 00:28:10 GMT
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[From EcoNet]
[Also Posted to misc.activism.progressive (by Somebody Else)]

================================================================
[Taken from the November 1992 Multinational Monitor.]

BP:  A Legacy of Apartheid, Pollution and Exploitation
by Julie Gozan

Symbolizing the increasing integration of the world economy,
the first piece of the empire assembled by the U.S. oil baron
John D. Rockefeller is now owned by a British company.  But
changing national ownership has not affected the social
orientation of the former Standard Oil of Ohio (Sohio),
now owned by the oil giant British Petroleum (BP).  BP has
remained true to Rockefeller's ruthless legacy, placing its
pursuit of profits above any human or environmental concerns.

Sohio, however, is just one important part of a massive
multinational corporation whose early growth was closely tied to
British imperialistic expansion.  BP benefitted enormously from
Britain's control of Iran's (then Persia's) oil supply in the
beginning of the twentieth century.  Through its exploitation
of Iranian resources, the company eventually developed into a
powerful presence among the Seven Sisters oil companies.

Today, BP is the largest company in the United Kingdom, the
second-largest in Europe and the third-largest oil company
in the world.  BP's London division is a $59 billion entity.
Internationally, BP has sought and gained a reputation as an
aggressive force in 70 countries, spending $20 billion in the
1980s to swallow its competitor in the North Sea, Britoil,
along with Sohio in the United States.

In recent years BP has intensified its oil exploration efforts
in various parts of the world while actively buying and
transferring assets.  In 1989, the company sold its coal mining
and minerals operations in Australia, Europe, the United States
and South Africa to Rio Tinto Zinc as part of its strategy to
concentrate on oil, gas and chemicals.

Oil exploration and production account for 20% of BP's revenues.
BP's primary exploration projects are in Alaska and the North
Sea, with an increasing focus beginning in the late 1980s on
China, Russia, Vietnam and West Africa.  In 1991 the company
produced more than 400 million barrels of crude oil, condensate
and natural gas liquids and had proven reserves of 4.6 billion
barrels of oil and 11 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

BP is a major producer of chemicals, which account for
8 percent of its total revenues.  The company's products
include petrochemicals and polymers, especially ethylene
and derivatives, used in packaging, housewares, construction
materials and cables; acetyls, used in paints, textiles,
solvents and drugs; nitriles, used in synthetic rubber and
plastic; and specialty products for aerospace, automotive,
electronics and plastics industries.  Another 8 percent of
revenues come from production of Purina brand animal feed
for the livestock industry, including products for fish
farming and poultry breeding.

Refining and marketing account for 64 percent of BP's revenues.
BP operates five refineries in the United States, five in
Europe, two in Australia and one in Singapore which altogether
processed a total of 1.8 million barrels of crude oil per day
during 1991.  The company co-runs an additional refinery with
Royal Dutch Shell in South Africa.  BP sells refined oil
products throughout the world, mostly through its 7,400 U.S.
and 7,700 European service stations.

BP's oil refining, trading and marketing in South and East Asia
extend from South Korea to Indonesia, with operations based in
Singapore and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.  BP has a one-third stake
in the Singapore Refining Company and in a refinery at Pasir
Panjang in Singapore.  In September 1990, BP began operating
Papua New Guinea's first commercial hydrocarbons project.
The company also has a stake in the Chevron- operated Kubutu
oil exploration project in Papua New Guinea which the oil
companies expect will produce 100,000 barrels of oil a day
and environmentalists fear will bring catastrophe to the
previously pristine Kubutu Lake ecosystem [See "Assault on
Papua New Guinea," Multinational Monitor, June 1992].

  Fueling Apartheid

BP prides itself on knowing no boundaries in its transnational
ventures and it vehemently defends its extensive operations
in apartheid South Africa.  The international anti-apartheid
movement regards the company as a long-standing enemy.  BP
sells oil and gasoline to the South African military and
co-operates Durban's South African Petroleum Refineries, the
largest refinery in the country.

BP is one of the last three multinational oil companies which
continue to refine crude oil in South Africa despite an
international oil embargo.  The company also violated the United
Nations oil embargo against colonial Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe),
supplying the then white-minority-led government with oil
smuggled through South Africa and Mozambique until the country
gained independence in 1980.

In 1979, BP's Nigerian holdings were nationalized in response
to allegations that the company was violating Nigerian sanctions
and using its operations there to supply oil to South Africa.
BP's Nigerian project, a joint venture with the Norwegian
government-owned Statoil, resumed its operations in 1991.

BP's South African subsidiaries include: BP Southern Africa
Ltd., which markets petroleum products; Adibis Ltd., which
markets chemical additives; and South African Lubricants
Manufacturing Co., a lubri- cants blending operation, which
is another joint venture with Royal Dutch Shell.  In 1990,
BP had 3,187 employees, $342 million in assets, 864 retail
outlets and 125 depots and distribution points in South Africa.

In 1990, BPs U.S. division, BP America, cut its funding of the
Cleveland National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People Freedom Fund dinner, an annual event, when company
officials learned that the theme for the fundraiser was South
Africa, and that Randall Robinson, executive director of the
Washington, D.C.-based, pro-disinvestment lobbying group
TransAfrica, would be the keynote speaker.

According to TransAfrica Deputy Director Anne Griffin, "The
BP/Shell operations in South Africa are an international model
in the anti-apartheid movement of what should not be allowed
to happen.  Until apartheid is completely and overwhelmingly
dismantled," she says, the organization remains opposed to
foreign companies doing business in South Africa and will
continue to sponsor its boycott of BP products begun in
January 1986.

BP justifies its presence in South Africa by stating its
position that "more investment means more employment" and
therefore "more income and more housing and more education"
in South Africa.  Cleveland TransAfrica representative Grace
Waite Jones charges, "The company says it is giving employment
opportunities to Black South Africans.  But the opportunities
provided its workforce are negligible when compared to BPs
negative impact the stalling of democracy in South Africa.
Without crude oil, the South African government would stop
working.  So BP is keeping the apartheid government alive."

In 1986, BP Southern Africa began funding an integrated housing
development in Cape Town, which it says will contribute to the
elimination of segregation in housing.  "We believe we can do
more good by our presence in South Africa than we can by pulling
out," says Thomas Koch, manager of public relations at BP
America.  Jones argues, "A couple of nice houses paid for by
BP do not make up for apartheid segregation.  Any charity the
company performs in South Africa is akin to putting a tiny
bandaid on an open wound."

  BP's America

Much of BP's international clout comes from its growing success
in the United States, where in recent years the company has
become a major competitor with U.S.-based oil companies.  BP
America currently accounts for about 40 percent of the parent
company's global assets.

BP America has undergone a number of mergers and realignments
in the past 20 years.  The company's original North American
division, BP Oil Corporation, was headquartered in New York.
On January 1, 1970, BP Oil merged with Sohio.  BP and Sohio
agreed that BP's 25 percent interest in the Ohio company would
be increased to 53 percent when the companies' Alaska production
reached 600,000 barrels a day, which occurred in January 1979.
In March 1987, BP bought the rest of Sohio and is now the
largest crude oil producer, one of the largest refiners and the
seventh-largest retail gasoline marketer in the United States.

Since June 1987, British Petroleum has owned 100 percent of BP
America, which is headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio.  The company
touts itself as a positive force for urban renewal in Cleveland,
employing 4,000 people and making financial contributions to the
local United Way chapter and other non-profit organizations.
Jones, however, who held monthly demonstrations at the BP
headquarters between 1989 and 1991 in coalition with
anti-apartheid, environmental and anti-Gulf War activists,
claims that the company's commitment to the city is hollow.

"The bottom line is always the profit margin," she says, citing
the approximately 800 lay-offs BP announced this year at its
45-story headquarters and research laboratories in Cleveland.
"This fall BP also cut short its contributions to the Cleveland
Free Clinic and a college scholarship program for local public
high school students.  The company cries poverty due to the
recession, but it is cutting back on public works while it
continues to make big profits at the gas stations," Jones
contends.

  Drilling Alaska

BP America was one of the first companies to exploit crude oil
in the Prudhoe Bay area of Alaska.  As majority owner of the
Alaska pipeline, BP has resisted government regulation of oil
activities in the state and sought permission to extend
exploration to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR),
threatening the existence of 180,000 Porcupine caribou that
calve on the Alaska North Slope where BP plans to locate its
oil and gas production.  Porcupine caribou are a vital source
of food for the Gwich'in people who live on both sides of the
Alaska-Canada border.  BP's plans to drill in the ANWR indicate
the company's particularly callous willingness to sacrifice the
environmentally sensitive area and its people in exchange for
regional oil yields which are predicted to last only 6 months.
The Gwich'in of Arctic Village and the Venetie, Chalkytsik, Fort
Yukon, Old Crow, Fort McPherson, Arctic Red River, Aklavik and
other traditional communities in northeast Alaska and northwest
Canada have organized in an effort to keep oil companies out of
ANWR.

Roger Harrera, executive consultant for BPs Alaskan operations,
BP Exploration Inc., has described the objections to ANWR
drilling as an "emotional and aesthetic plea for untouched and
untamed natural areas to satisfy the yearnings of mankind for
the beauty and wilderness of nature," referring to the
controversy as merely "an issue of local fauna."  During the
Persian Gulf War, BP began pushing its agenda in Alaska as a
solution to U.S. dependence on imported oil.

BP Exploration lobbied to pass a bill proposed by Senator
Bennett Johnston, D-Louisiana, aimed at reducing U.S. dependence
on imported oil that would allow oil and gas development in the
refuge.  Although the bill was withdrawn in November 1991,
environmental and indigenous rights groups in the area believe
that it could be resurrected following the 1992 presidential
election.  For the time being, BP has dropped its Arctic Refuge
campaign, but Cynthia Monroe, project coordinator for the
Gwich'in Steering Committee in Anchorage, says that "once the
next president is elected, industrial forces will gear up again
to drill in the refuge.  BP and the other oil companies will
push very hard to force a pro-drilling bill through Congress."

"BP succeeds as a corporation," says Monroe.  "It makes profits
for its executives and shareholders.  Where it fails is as an
energy company, which should develop sustainable and safe
energy.  That is what BP is not interested in doing."  Local
criticism of BPs activities in the region stem from previous
environmental disasters:  In January 1987, 966,000 gallons of
BP oil leaked from a leased tanker into the Gulf of Alaska.
In October of the same year, the same ship spilled 630,000
gallons of BP oil in the North Pacific.  In 1990, the state
of Alaska sued BP and other owners of the Alaska pipeline for
not responding promptly and adequately to contain and remove
spilled oil from the Exxon Valdez.

  Leading in Contamination

In August 1991, based on its analysis of Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) toxic release inventory data for 1990
(the most recent available), the Washington, D.C.-based public
interest group Citizen Action named BP among the top 10
polluters in the United States.  BP America's two plants in
Lima, Ohio were "far and away the biggest polluters in Ohio"
according to a report released by the Ohio Public Interest
Campaign in November 1988.  The Lima chemical plant and adjacent
refinery produced 68 million pounds of toxic pollution in 1987,
including 8.2 million pounds released into the air, 58.2 million
pounds injected underground,380,000 pounds dumped into the
Ottawa River and one million pounds disposed of on the land.
The same two BP America plants also lead Ohio in chemical
accidents, having spilled or accidentally released more than
300,000 gallons and 33 million pounds of pollutants into the
water, groundwater and air between 1978 and 1988, according to
the Ohio EPA.

Ed Hopkins, director of Citizen Action's toxic action project,
says that many of the chemicals released by BP America in
Lima are potent carcinogens, including benzene, chromium and
acrylonitrile.  Others can cause genetic damage, fetal damage
or birth defects at unsafe levels of exposure; these include
formaldehyde, ethyl benzene, methyl ethyl ketone (MEK) and
carbon tetrachloride.  Lima residents are afflicted with
abnormally high death rates for cancers of the lung, rectum
and cervix and for emphysema, chronic bronchitis and bronchial
asthma, according to Ohio Department of Health studies.
Residents of the south side of Lima, near the BP plants, suffer
from chronic nosebleeds and watering eyes.

In 1989, Lima area residents formed a community organization,
Allen County Citizens for the Environment (ACCE), a BP watchdog
organization to pressure the state to monitor the health risks
posed by the company to the 1,000 employees at the Lima refinery
and chemical plant and to local residents.  "BP has treated us
as a PR problem instead of taking our concerns seriously," says
ACCE member and former president Norine Warnock.  "The company
is not used to having citizens ask questions.  BP says enough
has been done because the county commissioner completed an air
monitoring study.  Well, the study looked at car exhaust.  It
did not mention acrylonitrile or ammonium, which is a serious
lung irritant."

In 1991, ACCE brought a lawsuit against BP, claiming that the
amount of pollutants discharged from the Lima refinery into the
Ottawa River exceeds the company's National Pollutant Discharge
Elimination permit.  A U.S. district court ruled, however, that
there was "insufficient evidence" of the charges.  BP responds
to accusations of environmental negligence by pointing to the
recent replacement of a 35-year old nitric acid plant in Lima
with a new $17 million facility, which the company says will
reduce acid-rain producing nitrogen oxide emissions by 95
percent.  Dave Little, spokesperson for ACCE, says that "the
primary problem is that the company is trying to get away with
the absolute minimum," describing BP's attitude towards
environmental and citizens concerns as "hostile."

"Allen County is an economically depressed area," says Little.
"For about two years now the company has been using the line
that anything done for the environment will cost jobs.  Well,
what is really hurting the economy here is Lima's reputation.
Outside of this town, people know that Allen County ranks number
one in Ohio for pollution and that BP's Lima plants rank number
one in the state for emissions.  People won't move here.
Businesses won't move here."

"I have health problems," says Warnock, "and my four-year-old
daughter has serious respiratory problems.  Maybe those problems
are not connected to BP but maybe they are.  Who is going to
tell us?  I've spent thousands of dollars on hospitals and
medication for my little girl.  That money doesn't help the
economy in Lima; it only helps the hospital.  The guy across the
street has cancer.  The woman down the street has brain cancer.
The woman around the corner has brain cancer.  The woman who
lives next door to my child's friend has cancer.  The woman on
the next block has breast cancer.  The guy next door to her has
cancer.  And so does the woman next door to him.  Those are just
the houses I can see when I am looking out my own front door."

The situation in Lima presents a worst case scenario which is
not anomalous to BP's record of environmental accidents and
violations:

* On August 20,1992, the environmental organization Greenpeace
International named BP as one of Scotland's two biggest
polluters.  According to Greenpeace, oil, toxic organochlorines
and heavy metals have been poured annually from a BP plant into
Scotland's estuary and coastal environments.

* A survey released in July 1992 by the Oakland, California-
based Public Data Project found that BP's chemical facility in
Hull, England discharges twice the toxic MEK into the water than
the total amount of MEK releases in the United States.

* In July 1991, BP was one of ten major oil companies cited by
the U.S.  Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for discharging
contaminated fluids from service stations into or directly above
underground sources of drinking water.  BP agreed to pay a fine
of $74,000 and to clean up the contaminated water sources by the
end of 1993.  As of the same month, the EPA had identified BP as
a potentially responsible party in the creation of 23 Superfund
hazardous waste sites.

* In February 1991 a mechanical defect in underground pipes
for an BP project at the British Stansted airport northeast
of London caused the spill of 57,000 gallons of aviation fuel,
killing hundreds of birds and fish and polluting the Stort
River.

* On February 7, 1990, a tanker carrying BP oil spilled 400,000
gallons of Alaskan crude oil along the Orange County, California
coastline off the shore of Huntington Beach.  Oil residue from
the spill contaminated the Huntington Beach Wetlands, which
are a refuge for migratory waterfowl and contain a number of
endangered species.  The following month, California's state
Department of Fish and Game accused BP of falsely claiming to
have performed oil spill cleanup work on Orange County's
Shoreline.

* In 1990, BP agreed to pay a $2.3 million fine as part of a
settlement of an $11 million lawsuit brought against the company
in 1986 by the EPA in connection with illegal discharges from
BP's Marcus Hook refinery into the Delaware River.

* BP London outraged environmentalists in 1990 by launching an
ad campaign that promoted a new brand of unleaded gasoline with
the claim that it caused "no pollution."  BP later apologized
for the statement.  BP's Koch points out, however, that the
company and its partners in the Wytch Farm oilfield development
in southern England have been recognized by The Royal Society of
Arts for integrating the development into "a scenic area of high
amenity value."

  Disgraceful Labor Record

BP has demonstrated no more respect for its workers than it has
for the environment, and has racked up a miserable labor record.

* In January 1992, the Irish Gentlemen's Union Club sponsored
protests in Cleveland in response to BP's refusal to sign the
MacBride Principles, an international covenant that supports
equal employment rights for Catholics in Northern Ireland.
Koch says that the company does not intend to sign the
principles.  "We don't believe it's necessary," he asserts,
"We are conducting our business in full compliance with fair
employment laws."

* In January 1991, the Washington state Department of Labor
fined BP America $135,000 for an explosion at a BP refinery that
killed one worker and injured six.

* In 1991, BP was among a large group of coal producers fined
by the U.S.  Department of Labor for tampering with coal dust
samples submitted to the federal agency in charge of monitoring
mine health conditions [See "The Great Coal Dust Scam,"
Multinational Monitor, July/August 1991].

* In September 1990, BP America paid $445,000 to 500 minority
job applicants to settle a race discrimination case with the
U.S.  Department of Labor.  A federal review of BP's hiring
practices in 1988 and 1989 determined that the difference
between the percentage of people of color applying for clerical
jobs at the company's Cleveland headquarters and the percentage
of people of color actually hired for those positions
constituted race discrimination.  The Labor Department's Office
of Federal Contract Compliance Programs reported that only 40
percent of applicants were white while 58 percent of jobs
were given to whites.  Under the settlement, 500 clerical
applicants--300 within the company seeking the clerical jobs,
and 200 from outside the company--received a one-time
compensatory payment from BP.

* Construction workers at BP's North Sea operations confronted
the company with a wave of wildcat strikes in 1989, using
sit-ins on oil platforms to appeal for improved safety
conditions and union recognition.

  Citizens Fight Back

BP's oil and chemical empire continues to grow garnering profits
at the expense of human rights, environmental health and safety.
In a public relations brochure appropriately titled "The World
of BP," British Petroleum maintains that its belief in
responsibility to the public has resulted in "a proud history
and a strong foundation for all our tomorrows."  Yet the
company's actual record creates an entirely different picture --
of an arrogant multinational presence surrounded by victimized
communities.

Fortunately, citizens' organizations will continue in their
efforts to hold the company accountable for its actions.  "Even
after five years of dealing with BP, I would like to think that
it could start running a much cleaner operation," says ACCE's
Warnock.  "I would like to think that its management could start
taking us seriously.  I don't think BP is anywhere near that
point.  But we will keep trying.  We are tenacious."  Grace
Jones agrees.  "British Petroleum's record stands, in South
Africa and here in Ohio.  And people are beginning to take
notice.

 ------------
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